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Will Rogers

Motherhood and Apple Pie

October 14, 2021 by Peg Leave a Comment

I am for both of these institutions and I bet so are most voters. So the slight of hand our politician’s must pull off is to make us think we are getting Mom’s apple pie for our tax monies when, in fact, we may be getting Jezebel’s cow pie.  

Take the Patriot Act for instance. The full name the naming gnomes came up with for this abomination is: “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA Patriot) Act of 2001.” An example of the Act’s true purpose is the secret FISA courts it created. FISA courts are Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts where the term “court” is turned on its head. Secret proceedings are the stuff of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, not places where due process and the protection of rights and liberty occur. Nothing could be less patriotic than The Patriot Act.

Much as we have ignored and subverted our core principles of innocent until and unless proven guilty in Guantanamo Bay “Detention” Camp, our legal and political system has incrementally used words to obfuscate and mislead. A detention center is where bad behaving children are disciplined. Guantanamo is America’s shameful gulag where we give the lie to our core values every day it remains open.

George Orwell was an English writer but his prescient works, Animal Farm and 1984, could be sounding the alarm for our government’s attempts to have us believe politicians pet projects are infrastructure and military incursions are peace missions. It is difficult to get voters to re-elect a politician if they know the person they are paying about $200,000 per year is spending trillions of dollars of taxpayer funds on pet projects and claiming they are infrastructure. Maybe what the politician wants to fund is a good idea but lying to the American public to get it funded is not.

Perhaps if we would rename broccoli, ice cream, we could save broccoli farmers from bankruptcy. Or maybe we could champion those wonderful brussel sprouts as COVID-19 cures. I am confident there would be some late-night charlatan somewhere on the internet or cable t.v. who would run such an idea as a Biblical alternative to vaccines.

As Congress castigates Mark Zuckerberg and wrings its hands at his subliminal manipulation of our youth, perhaps it could turn its spotlight on itself and start policing its own Newspeak. The politicians’ callous indifference to the citizenry’s confusion over science and religion or peace and war or progress over stagnation is in need of a good analysis by a contemporary Will Rogers or Mark Twain or George Orwell or Joseph (Catch 22) Heller.

Anyway, I cannot devote any more time to such pursuits as it is the middle of football season. So, for now, I must concentrate upon what is truly important, at least to me, and I will blithely rely upon the goodwill of the politicians to address the rest in terms that lull me back to indifference.

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Filed Under: America, Authors, COVID-19, Gavel Gamut Tagged With: apple pie, COVID-19, Detention Camp, FISA courts, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Guantanamo, gulag, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Joseph Heller, Mark Twain, Mark Zuckerberg, motherhood, Newspeak, Patriot Act, Will Rogers

A Tale of Two Counties

October 11, 2019 by Peg Leave a Comment

Posey County, Indiana
Osage County, Oklahoma

 

 

America is a wonderful country from the amazing amalgam of cultures in cities such as Miami, New York City, San Francisco and Portland to the majesty of Yellowstone and the Mississippi River. We are truly fortunate to have the privilege to live here. As for Peg and me, we are most familiar with two counties in two states, Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma.

Of course, the basic element of all inhabited areas is the same, the inhabitants, and those inhabitants are more alike than unalike wherever we live. I have found this to be true from Russia and Ukraine to Palestine and Bahrain as I have taught judges from several foreign countries and from every state in America. Of course, I have also physically visited a few places around the world. It has been my great pleasure to discover practically everybody I meet is interesting. I understand why Will Rogers who grew up near Osage County, Oklahoma said he’d never met someone he didn’t like.

But just focusing on Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma, the two places Peg and I call home, I find much to admire in both. In Posey County the soil is so rich and the people are so industrious that enough wheat, corn and soybeans are produced to feed much of the world. And Osage County’s Tallgrass Prairie and hardworking cowhands furnish the accompanying beef. One need never go hungry if he or she spends time in either county.

I hope I have made it clear that I truly appreciate the county where I was born and the county where I have earned a living. On the other hand, just as there was a serpent in the Garden of Eden, both Posey and Osage Counties fall a little short of perfection due to the foibles of Mother Nature. I suppose life just requires that we occasionally find half a worm in an apple. Let me explain.

Neither Posey nor Osage County has unbearable weather. Each gets a couple of snows each year and each has a hot July and August along with a rainy spring and fall. Both experience tornadoes. For Posey County, Big Creek and the Ohio and Wabash Rivers occasionally flood as does Bird Creek in Osage County along with the Arkansas and Caney Rivers. But all in all the climate for both counties is fairly salubrious. In fact, the weather in both helps make them more interesting and for Indiana it gives citizens something besides basketball to talk about and for Oklahoma it expands the topics beyond football. Both states used to discuss politics but recently most rational people do not broach that topic.

However, it is not the occasional weather phenomenon that keeps paradise just out of reach for both counties. No, it is Mother Nature’s diabolical sense of humor. Let’s take up spring in Posey County first. You may know that Osage County, Oklahoma has thousands of roaming buffalo (bison). Well, just to make sure Hoosiers remember who dictates what happens in heaven, each April, May and June millions of biting/blood sucking buffalo gnats (flies) descend on Posey County much like the Biblical hordes of locusts. And like beachgoers after the movie Jaws it simply is not fun to be outside.

But Osage County has its own flies and to add to Mother Nature’s amusement She has supplied Osage County with several varieties of scorpions. Gentle Reader, should you never have been stung by a scorpion, as I have in Oklahoma, trust me, it is an experience you do not want. Peg, who is a born Yankee who spent her childhood in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and northern Indiana, has now learned to shake out her boots in the morning to be sure some scorpion has not chosen them as a residence. And the ubiquitous sand rock of Osage County appears to be a scorpion’s version of the Garden of Eden where the scorpions play the serpent’s role.

I guess what it comes down to is both Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma are wonderful places to live. But don’t forget to channel Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen and wear screening over your head and carry a fly swatter in Posey and shake out your boots in The Osage nine months out of the year.

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Filed Under: Family, Gavel Gamut, Indiana, Osage County, Posey County Tagged With: A Tale of Two Counties, Arkansas River, basketball, Big Creek, Bird Creek, buffalo, Buffalo Gnats, Caney River, football, Garden of Eden, James M. Redwine, Jaws, Jim Redwine, Katherine Hepburn, locusts, Mother Nature, Ohio River, Osage County, Posey County, scorpions, Tallgrass Prairie, The African Queen, Wabash River, Will Rogers

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